Random on Alkahest

In which my denial of free will receives support from Science [tm]

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:56:01 +0000

I’ve long maintained that free will is an illusion. That the mind arises from the physicality of the brain and that there is no room for an active will separate from the physical processes of the brain. That’s not to say that I’m a fatalist. I don’t believe that thoughts are deterministic, let alone subject to perfect prediction. My position boils down to the brain as a (gigantic) black box containing an uncountable number of states. Input from the senses changes the state of the brain and occasionally results in actions.

Model update (updated!, updated again)

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:09:45 +0000

Earlier, I posted my current model for predicting the NCAA tournament. Since the whole thing is probabilistic, I figured that I would test it out against the current NCAA standings. I considered four models:

The one that I described
A random selection of which team would win (50/50 chance)
Always picking the top seeded team
A model suggested by a colleague at work

For each model, I ran 10,000 tests and compared them to the current NCAA tournament results, counting the scores for each test. Results are:

They laughed at my theories!

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:09:59 +0000

They laughed at my theories. They threw tomatoes when I presented my paper at the academy! Tomatoes I tell you! My minions cower in terror, shrinking in fright from the very ideas contained herein! But I will show them! I will PROVE IT TO THEM ONCE AND FOR ALL. The FOOLS, I WILL DESTROY THEM!! MWAHAHAHAAAA!(ask me how)

Oh, sorry. Where was I? Apparently, there’s this basketball thing going on. Some sort of NCAA tournament that will prove who has the best basketball team. But what if it doesn’t? What if it’s all just arbitrary? Could it be that the chances of any team winning a game are not deterministic, but rather stochastic? I’ll admit that I don’t know that much about basketball. I mean, I played the sport in junior high. I do know the rules. And I even think that it’s a pretty game. But I don’t follow the ins and outs of a particular season.

Allman Brothers Band

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:31:14 +0000

10256 It’s a good day for the Allman Brothers. Great southern rock without the confederate overtones and segregationist dog whistles in Lynard Skynyrd.

Great moments in . . .

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:39:44 +0000

Minor notes, none worth their own post.

Traffic management: I get a call from K around 5:30. She’s stuck behind an accident and the cops on the scene, a) don’t tell people to take a detour until they’ve been there for a half hour; and b) once the ambulance has left the scene, don’t direct traffic around the one remaining open lane. So, after waiting a half hour, K has to take a 20+ minute detour home.
Memory: Once she gets in, K and I are fixing leftovers for dinner. C: “Hey, where are the mashed potatoes?” K: “Where did you put them?” “In the fridge, but I can’t find them.” “Maybe they’re in the freezer.” “Nope, not there either.” Ten minutes of looking for the potatoes. Did we throw them out on Sunday? Nope, not in the trash. Did C put them in the pantry? Nope. Can’t find ’em, can’t find ’em. Finally, K says, “wait, we fixed rice on Sunday.” There weren’t any potatoes. I would attribute it to getting old, but I’ve always been this way.
FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt): we’re testing some things at the office – will our authentication system (active directory) honor password failure lockouts when using LDAP authentication? I ask our windows consultant to either a) answer the question, or b) enable an account lockout policy so we can test. He responds back that he can do that, but with the warning that “many Linux services aren’t well-designed for this, and repeatedly try a cached or user-provided password, so that users or service accounts may be mysteriously locked out after one attempt or at some future time when passwords change.” Which is complete and utter B.S. Signs that it’s BS? He references Linux services as opposed to open source, i.e. attempted linux dig. And I used to “own” identity management services, including authentication at a large university and if this was the case, things would have blown up within 10 minutes. I thanked him for the advice and noted that I’ve never seen this, but that it’s why we test.
OS Performance: we’re looking into some new ideas at the office. Things that could be useful as a preprocessor for a host based intrusion detection system. As part of my testing, I told my laptop to audit all syscalls made to the kernel, by all processes on the system. CPU load spiked, system performance went through the floor, the windowing system became almost completely non-responsive. In the two minutes it took to get access to a terminal, I logged 150 MB of audit logs. On the plus side, all of the information we need can be collected. Now I just need to figure out how to keep a usable system.
Self aggrandizement: talking to my technical manager, we need to write up two journal papers based on our recent work. Cool!

I hope everyone had a good Veteran’s Day and remembered to thank the veterans in their lives.

robert johnson

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:57:08 +0000

Dear Amazon.com:

After buying the collected works of Robert Johnson, blues guitarist from the 1930s, the man who was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil to become the greatest blues guitarist ever, I really don’t think I want albums by Robert Johnson the 70s power pop musician. I know they have the same name, but trust me, they aren’t the same person.

kthxbai

Poindexter

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 17:55:40 +0000

It’s taken me a bit to write about Admiral Poindexter’s visit and the small group talk we had with him. Let me start by reminding folks that here’s a guy who was convicted of lying to congress. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality. He’s also very politically savvy. I once asked my father if he would ever pursue becoming a general in the army. He told me that he was hoping to make full colonel (he later retired as a lt. colonel), but that becoming a general required a literal act of congress and that you needed to become a politician. I would assume the same thing is the case with an admiral and doubly so in the case of Poindexter who managed to become the highest ranking geek in government. All of which is to say take my impressions with a grain of salt.

"A plan, a plan, my kingdom for a plan!"

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 17:47:55 +0000

Now that the Democratic Party has won congress, a result I am thrilled to see, there will be increasing cries for them to present “A Plan for Iraq. Leaving aside the constitutional issues, i.e., the executive branch is responsible for military operations, while congress controls the purse strings and provides oversight, asking for a plan at this point is a complete exercise in futility. There were a number of plans presented or endorse by Democrats over the past four years and all of them were ignored. At this point, Republicans are basically saying, “we’ve ignored you for years, but now that it’s completely fubar’d what do you intend to do about it?

Free hugs!

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:15:30 +0000

and if you haven’t seen this, you should – it’s very good.

workplace culture

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:51:02 +0000

Caveat lector – this is not a fully formed thought, I’m just trying to get some ideas down.

I worked with a guy (not a friend) who was obsessed by workplace culture. As near as I could tell, he came from an environment with an entirely different culture and didn’t care for the one we had. At one point, he and another person (a friend) gave a talk on culture. They described different aspects of culture, including appearance and behavior.